Microsoft hopes to wrap up during the second quarter the deal  to acquire Tellme Networks, a company specializing in voice-recognition technology that lets users get Internet information through their mobile phones. The Tellme platform provides service to over 40 million people per month and is based on the VoiceXML 2.0 open-standards specification. The giant from Redmond will pay around $800 million for the company, making it Microsoft’s most pricey purchase since 2000.

Voice-recognition technology is not yet widespread. However, applying this technology in the mobile sector can become an opportunity for this market in a short-term.

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Title: Estudios sobre inversión publicitaria en medios interactivos. Year: 2006
Source: Interactive Advertising Bureau Spain & PricewaterhouseCoopers
Date: March 28, 2007
Abstract: Investment in interactive media is doing just fine. This according to the joint study from PwC and the IAB. In 2006, online ad investing grew 91.38% compared to the previous year, raking in a total of €310.5 million.  This figure represented 4.25% of the total advertising investment in conventional media and, according to Javier Navarro, vice president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), outranks investment in Sunday newspapers and motion pictures. “If investment continues to grow at the same rate, Internet in 2007 will surpass magazines and radio as well,” said Navarro.
The study points out three driving forces behind the growth: the increasing confidence by numerous advertisers in interactive media; the unstoppable rise in search-engine advertising and sponsored links, which already takes in 70% of the revenues; and the growing investment in graphic formats. The click formula is still the most often used contractual model, with nearly half of overall investment (49.9%), which amounts to a growth of four percentage points compared to 2005. Also slightly on the rise are contracts based on the pay-per-sale, connection-time or pay-per-lead models, while the CPM model continues its gradual downward slide, dropping from 42.2% in 2005 to 30.9% in 2006. This data situates the Spanish online advertising market at a maturity level similar to other European markets. Other formats, such as mobile marketing, continue to be residual, failing to capture even 1% of overall online investing.

Full Story (PDF, 196 Kb) (In Spanish)

The blogosphere is stirred up. Tim O’Reilly, creator of the Web 2.0 concept, and Jim Wales, creator of the Wikipedia, have proposed to create a code of ethics for blog authors. Thus far aspects being tossed around include ignoring trolls, agitators that write rude or offensive messages or interrupt the discussion by upsetting participants; not allowing anonymous comments, and an accountability system for published information. O’Reilly and Wales have made their blogs available to Internauts so that they can express their viewpoints and proposals for enriching this potential code of conduct. However, part of the participants in the debate considers it paradoxical to try to regulate the blogosphere given its given its nature as a space for freedom of expression.

Articles in InformationWeek, The New York Times and BBC News

The digital divide between poor and rich countries is diminishing but far from disappearing. Among the many institutions and companies looking to reduce it includes Stanford University, whose Digital Divide program works as an incubator for IT projects in the social field and has already invested nine million euros in IT projects in countries such as India and Pakistan. Microsoft since 2003 has been running its Unlimited Potential project, which has sent over $2 billion in social projects related to IT in a hundred countries. Alcatel-Lucent has been behind the Broadband for All program for four years now, which helps make high-speed Internet connections available in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia. Google has just announced its joint-collaboration project with UNESCO, a portal devoted to combating illiteracy.

News in Terra and Ciberpaís
Article in El País